Louise's UK Recruiter Blog

Enhance Media Event

This must be the forth year that I'll be attending Enhance Media's annual conference and so far I've enjoyed every one!  This year's event takes place in central London on the 28th January. 

Speakers include: 

LinkedIn – Talking about the future of online recruitment via business networking.
Capita – The move of recruitment from job boards to search engines, to Twitter.
Lawspeed - Guiding you through the laws behind using social media for recruitment.
Jobg8 – The new model that will change the job board industry forever?
Madgex - The future of recruitment technology

There is also an expert panel featuring Google, Microsoft Bing and Monster discussing the key issues faced by all parties in the online recruitment space in the coming year.

I'll be there taking plenty of notes but if you can make it along let me know and we can chat over lunch (let's hope it is a good as last year's!)

Recruiting Unconference - February 2010

Bill Boorman ran a very successful recruitment unconference last autumn.  His next event is on a much larger scale and takes place from the 17th to 19th February.  The general idea is that he has brought a number of recruitment and social media specialists together to do informal sessions over a two day period.  These run on the 18th and 19th February.  He calls his presenters "track leaders" as the unconfernce bit of the title basically means there are no formal presentations and absolutely no PowerPoint allowed.
 
Track leaders include: Andy Headworth, Jim Stroud, Matt Alder, Laurie Ruettimann, Bill Boorman, Trish MacFarlane, Peter Gold, Steve Boese, Lisa Scales, Geoff Webb, Dee Allan, Jacco Valkenburg, Keith Robinson and Alan Whitford
 
Andy Headworth (who is one  of the track leaders) has done a short video to explain the unconference.
 
The 17th is an event specifically for "sourcers" with 4 experts teaching advanced sourcing techniques for finding and profiling hard to find candidates and clients.   You can register to only attend this event: http://trusource.eventbrite.com/
 
On the evening of the 18th February there is also a social event - a "Curry tweetup" where you can meet all the track leaders, partake of a curry, bid in the charity auction and enjoy the casino and music that will be provided.  You can register for this even if you can't make any of the other parts of the unconference: http://trucurrytweetup.eventbrite.com/
 
I have to say it's difficult to find one place with all the information on the unconference (perhaps it's the nature of an unconference not to give too much away too easily!).  However the starting points are the TRU Conferences website, the TRU London page and the event booking page.

The Agency Central Employment Index - 2009 figures

Agency Central produce an Employment Index which gathers data from a range of employment sources.
 
His index is based on statistics, (specifically relating to the Recruitment Agency Marketplace), compiled from the companies using the website and tracks the employment market activity across a variety of variables.
 
You can read more about previous figures in a post I wrote in October 2009.
 
The figures for October, November and December 2009 are on the new chart (see above).  Good news for the industry continues!
 

Social Media in Recruitment Conference

Last year Mike Taylor ran the first Social Media in Recruitment Conference.   It was a really well attended event with lots of interesting speakers (I did a little write up here).

He is running the second event on 22nd April at the British Library in London.  He has another great line up of speakers:

Strategies for using LinkedIn as part of your online recruitment plans
Mike Pilcher-  Director of Corporate Solutions, LinkedIn Europe
 
Key strategies for using Twitter effectively in recruitment, including the use of automated tools.
Andy Headworth – Owner – Sirona Consulting Ltd
 
How online communities can play a part in your attraction strategies
Lisa Scales – Director – Talent On View Ltd
 
2009 Success Stories
Elkie Holland – Director – Prospectus IT Recruitment
Jonathan Hart Smith – Director – CK Clinical
 
Social media strategies for "Generation Y" job seekers.
Lucian Tarnowski - Founder – BraveNewTalent.com
 
How to maximise the use of Facebook pages as part of your recruitment mix.
Peter Gold - Founder – Hire Strategies Ltd

The legal issues surrounding social media and employment.
Adrian Marlowe- Director – Lawspeed
 
Insights from Google to help you recruit using social media.
Luke McKend – Industry Head of Careers at Google UK
 
Social Media Panel Discussion –
Alan Whitford – Founder – RCEuro.com (Panel Chairman)
Louise Triance –  Managing Director – UK Recruiter
Matt Alder – Founder – MetaShift
Bill Boorman Managing Director – Bill Boorman Ltd

Apart from the end bit when I'll be on the  panel I'm very much looking forward to attending and hope to see you there!
 

If  you sign up before 31st January you get a £75 discount

Review of Recruitment Juice Live

 

I was very disappointed to be snowed in and thus miss the Recruitment Juice Live event held recently.

 

I was even more gutted when I heard what a superb event it had been.  I had planned to write a review of the event but luckily "Recruitment Dad" has done a superb round up here:

 

I'll be first in line to sign up for the next event if/when they run one!

 

TalentPuzzle

TalentPuzzle launched at the tail end of last summer. It's basically a introduction agency for employers with a vacancy and agencies who can fill it.  It works on a bounty basis for contingency placements.

An employer posts details of their vacancy (confidently) and the amount they are prepared to pay for a successful placement.  Agencies can log in to view the vacancies and then put forward suitable candidates.

Employers don't pay to post vacancies.  TlaentPuzzzle take 25% of the placement fee earned by the recruiter.

The idea behind the model (which is very successful In the US via http://www.bountyjobs.com/) is that time and money are saved by the corporate by not having to locate an agency to help them fill their roles and not having to get involved in negotiations about terms.  It means that agencies can locate roles without having to cold call or get onto PSLs. 

I personally think this is a great addition to the current online recruitment landscape.  It's not going to be the answer for everyone (recruiters who won't negotiate on fees or work on a contingency basis won't use it) but I should think it's worth any recruiter checking out the site.  All you need is for a role for which you have the perfect candidate to be up there and you save yourself an awful lot of time in placing that candidate.

 

"Pushing" vacancies to jobseekers

Stephen O'Donnell has written a blog post today looking at some the things he sees in the future of recruiting.  I had a bit of trouble with the first part as I hadn't watched the new TV series he was talking about.

However, he does talk about some potential developments I agree with.  The one I wanted to comment on was "Imagine every mention of an employer online, when hovered over, offered the option to “View all vacancies available with this employer”?  Well, I've seen this done already, albeit within a software platform.  It's a development that Innovantage made sometime last year.  I'm not sure if they have it in their current offering but the way it worked was as you browse the web and hover over company names it brought up a side bar with information on those indexed in their database.   One of those bits of information was a list of current vacancies.

This is an application created for other recruiters (vacancy sourcing and business development) rather than jobseekers but it's just one step from what Stephen is talking about.

The main limitation to this is that many many recruitment adverts (run by agencies) don't contain the company name.  If a company is advertising "blind" they'll never be found by that method.  I guess if the technology was created for jobseekers and took off then more companies may see the benefit of running named adverts.

Another feature I'd like to see is a steal from Amazon's "wish list" where candidates could create a list of companies (as they browse the internet) that they want to be informed when they are recruiting.  So, as soon as an advert goes up for x company the jobseeker gets an email notification.

Positive Outlook or January Blues?

I see that TipTopJob.com have done a survey showing "more than 50% of workforces suffer from the January office blues".

No offence to TipTopJob but I do hate survey's like this.  That means than just less than 50% don't have "office blues".  Surely on any particular day half the workforce don't really want to be at work. Also, with crash diets and alcohol withdrawal symptoms a few people are bound to be a little bit grumpy.

Luckily, so far, this hasn't been my experience.  We're all nice and perky in the UK Recruiter offices and everyone I've spoken to has been cheerful and positive.  There is also an awful lot of "activity" going on.  I've got no end of meetings lined up (if you'd like to meet with me for a chat about plans for 2010 just drop me a note) and seem to have a lot of events to attend.

Next week I'm off to the Recruitment Juice Live Event.  I've always had a lot of time for Roy and Matt from Recruitment Juice so am really looking forward to it.  It's an event to "Transform the way you approach new clients and generate more business". 

Along with the positive feelings and events I'm already hearing stories of business picking up - let's hope it continues!